What kind of inferno are the musicians talking about?The profane one we all experience day after day?Or is “inferno” meant to be a metaphor for the freedom of the improviser?Are they blowing it out or are they blowing it off?Or are they cancelling it because it is not going to happen?Or could it be a persiflage on the slippery music business that both musicians have gained experience with from various points of view?Russian composer, pianist, electronic musician and painter Mikhail Chekalin (born 1959, Moscow)"Arguably he is the most influential modern composer of the last 35 years in the former USSR, now Russia. His work was experimental; in fact his creative intent was specifically to break new ground stylistically(Progression Mag.#51,USA) and Ulli A. Rützel (born 1944), a German music producer, music publisher and early freejazz pianist from the sixties became acquainted in the early nineties. Rützel has published some of Chekalin´s music on his record labels Erdenklang and CCn´C.

M. Chekalin about “Blowing of The Inferno” I conceived the idea of creating this composition spontaneously, but not accidentally, as we, Ulli and I, know each other from as far back as the early ‘90s. The Inferno imagery reminds me of an avant-garde playfully contraversial use of symbols; their negation of negation, as is the case with the personage of Lucifer, f.e. ...which brings to my mind encounters and discussions with Karlheinz Schtokhausen in 1990; my acquaintance with him served, of itself, as a kind of symbol, a passing-on the baton of epoch-making music paradigms...Still another meaningful encounter occured in the ’90, that with Frank, this present work might be doing homage partly to him. It was exactly at that fateful point in history, early ’90s, which turned out more of a bang, less of a romance – that we made friends with UlrichIt was Ulli who came up with the title; his point seems beyond controversy to me and rather the provocation to sheer delight. For, in the best possible way, it invokes or reveals an infernal contradictiousness of a hell of a time in which we live; also a radical and protestant air, once a must in a work of music, that has sunk into oblivion by now. Here it has found its realization, pulling together those three aspects, composition, improvisation and mixing. Perhaps a steady reaching for an exit out of Inferno which continues to exist is the basic essential of music for me. Freedom to pose questions rhymes for me with the problem of our times, as John Fawles puts it, individual freedom against an enforced conformism.

You will find the complete liner notes here on this site under “Medienservice“ (left in the frame)Zur Verlinkung hier die bei uns erschienen CDsLAST SEASONS – CCn’C 01612 (Zeitgenössische Musik)